There are many occasions when a person enters a contract of sale of land without other partner or person name. However, you find out later that you need to add your partner, remove yourself or add another person all together.
However, it is not as simple as just hand amending the contract or sending an email to the vendor. There is a process to add or remove the purchasers name on the contract
For example: If Person A enters a Contract to purchase a property, but Person B has been left out of the Contract of Sale. Person A do not simply add Person B’s name on the Contract. This may trigger major additional liability for transfer duty – no-one wants to have to pay more transfer duty than they have to.
What can I do to change my Contract?
Firstly, it is important to know that the vendor does not have to agree to change the buyer entity in the Contract. If the vendor does not agree, then you are stuck with the Contract as is. A vendor in a rising market may have found another buyer and may not mind if Buyer A can’t go ahead with the Contract.
Often, the vendor will be agreeable to changing the buyer because the vendor just wants the sale to go through. But the vendor will usually make the buyer pay all legal costs of fixing things up.
The Buyer or the purchaser’s Solicitor would prepare what is known as a Deed of Rescission to rescind (or cancel) the Contract between the Original purchaser and the vendor. Once the Deed of Rescission is prepared, the Real Estate Agent will prepare a new contract to be signed by the correct Buyers and the vendor at the same time as the Deed of Rescission.
What is a Deed of Rescission?
A Deed of Rescission is a document which forms an agreement between the vendor and purchaser to terminate the original Contract. The word ‘rescission’ means revoked or cancelled.
Rescission will not take effect until the new contract has been signed. The vendor will require the cooling-off period to be waived for the new Contract, and often will require the new Contract to be unconditional. This means that at no time is there no Contract in place at all between the parties. This reduces the risk of the vendor changing their mind and refusing to sign the New Contract, thinking that the Original Contract has been rescinded.
We prefer to review your Contract before you sign it so that we can confirm with you that all the details in the Contract have been correctly provided or prepared
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Solicitor Jaspreet Singh 